Maria Miller expenses row: pressure mounts on Culture Minister

Maria Miller: Sir Alistair Graham said her failure to co-operate fully with the commissioner's inquiry was "pretty shocking" (Picture: PA)

Pressure is building on Maria Miller after an audio tape of a phone call between an aide to the Culture Secretary and a reporter investigating her expenses claims was released.

The tape, released by The Daily Telegraph, reveals the Culture Minister's special adviser Jo Hindley "flagged up" the fact that she would be meeting the paper's then editor about the Leveson report into press standards - something which then editor Tony Gallagher interpreted as a threat.

Meanwhile, details of letters sent by Mrs Miller to the parliamentary commissioner investigating her expenses claims led to allegations that the MP may have bullied the watchdog during the inquiry.

Commissioner Kathryn Hudson recommended Mrs Miller should repay £45,000 in expenses for a house which she shared with her parents, but the cross-party House of Commons Standards Committee overruled the watchdog and decided she only needed to hand back £5,800 in overclaimed mortgage interest.

Mrs Miller, who made a 32-second apology to the Commons earlier this week, has won the "warm support" of Prime Minister David Cameron.

But Labour MPs have urged police to examine Mrs Miller's expenses and demanded the publication of the full minutes of the committee's meetings to discuss the case behind closed doors.

The 10-member committee attempted to defuse criticism of its actions by releasing a joint statement with Ms Hudson describing the situation as "complex" and stressing Mrs Miller had been rebuked for failing to co-operate with the investigation.

In the audio tape released by the Telegraph, Ms Hindley tells the reporter that another journalist who called at Mrs Miller's home had spoken to the MP's father, who had recently been in hospital. Some details were redacted from the recording to protect his privacy.

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"I should just flag up as well, whilst you're on it, that when she doorstepped him, she got Maria's father, who's just had a [redacted] and come out of [redacted]," said Ms Hindley.

"Maria has obviously been having quite a lot of editors' meetings around Leveson at the moment. So I'm just going to flag up that connection for you to think about."

Explaining why he regarded the reference to Leveson as a veiled threat, Mr Gallagher, told BBC2's Newsnight: "Bear in mind this was a time of what I would call anti-press hysteria.

"The press was feeling very vulnerable just after the publication of the Leveson Report and there was a great desire on the part of all media organisations not to fall foul of somebody raising the spectre of Leveson.

"We were in no doubt that threats were being made. Joanna Hindley was not even attempting to be sophisitcated about it - she menaced the reporter openly... The reporter took that as a very clear threat."

But a Whitehall source said that it was clear from the recording, made without Ms Hindley's knowledge, that she had been voicing concerns about the doorstepping of Mrs Miller's father, who was ill, and had been making clear that the minister would raise the issue at an upcoming meeting with the editor, which happened to relate to the Leveson report.

The source said that Mrs Miller did in fact speak to Mr Gallagher about the treatment of her father, and received a written apology from him.

Labour leader Ed Miliband told the Telegraph that Mr Cameron had shown "weak leadership" and should have "stood up and said that what she did was wrong".

The former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Sir Alistair Graham, said Mrs Miller's failure to co-operate fully with the commissioner's inquiry was "pretty shocking".

Sir Alistair told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "The degree of lack of co-operation or the attempt to divert the commissioner from addressing the issues concerned seems fairly exceptional. I think particularly for a senior Cabinet minister, who you expect to show a leadership role in co-operating with whatever expenses system is around, it is pretty shocking.

"I think the public will be very shocked that the committee did overturn one of the key recommendations about how much should be repaid back, when there is a real possibility that the minister made a capital gain with the help of public funds."